LANCZ GALLERY

It was in the Sablon district of Brussels that Patrick Lancz opened his first gallery in 1991. A fervent admirer of the Belgian School, which covers the Symbolist, Impressionist and Fauvist period of the years 1890-1930, he also specializes in Belgian avant-garde of the 1920s and the abstraction of the 1950s-1970s. Patrick Lancz organizes two to three exhibitions a year with the ambition of offering a varied range of artists whose works offer a harmony of techniques and colors. These are sublimated by an old frame chosen with care. The rest of the year, the picture rails of the gallery host various sets that change with the seasons.

The gallery’s clientele includes both private and public buyers such as the Musée d’Ixelles, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Brussels, the Musée d’Orsay and many international collectors. Patrick Lancz also participates in various international fairs including the Salon du Dessin, Fine Arts Paris & La Biennale, Antica Brussels and the BRAFA Art Fair. The objective is to present to the public an overview of the riches of Belgian art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries: Arthur Craco, Walter Sauer, Léon Spilliaert, Firmin Baes, Théo Van Rysselberghe and many others. In this way, the Lancz Gallery wishes to arouse the curiosity of art lovers and offer them a place of discovery.

Returning from Spain, the Degouve de Nuncques couple settled once again in Brussels. The golden age of literary-inspired symbolism was over, giving way to a moderate luminism as the most influential new current. Artists participating in the Vie et Lumière exhibitions primarily focused on landscape, rendered in an idyllic impressionist style.

For the artist, landscape had always been more than a picturesque motif. From the beginning, landscape constituted the core and soul of his work. Back in Brussels, the Brabant landscape once again became his main subject, as it was at the start of his career. For him, it was not academic training but nature itself that was the master to follow. In the most naive way possible, he sought to represent the landscape in accordance with his temperament.

Art critics Luc and Paul Haesaerts describe in their monograph how William Degouve de Nuncques identified with his environment: “Rising early, accompanied by his wife, he would set off, canvas and bag on his back, in the morning, avoiding towns and main roads, seeking out the most secluded, the wildest, the most ‘primitive’ places. They would nourish themselves along the way with eggs, bread, fruit, and milk (adhering to foods permitted by a diet that this pilgrim couple, through natural gentleness and respect for all life, wanted to be vegetarian). If, in the evening, often covered with dust or snow, they found themselves too far from home, they would ask farmers for hospitality; before obtaining it, they sometimes had to knock, like beggars, on many doors.”

In his painting, the simplified forms and ascetic technique contribute to the representation of solitude and silence. In Degouve’s work, landscapes emphasize simplicity and sobriety.